


Midnight Skies Swallowed up Our Childlike Eyes

by theradiointukyshead



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, in which their conjoined roofs form a little patio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 05:28:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3315911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theradiointukyshead/pseuds/theradiointukyshead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simmons and Skye move to their new place and become neighbors with Fitz. Cue the obligatory awkward first meeting and all the shenanigans that follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midnight Skies Swallowed up Our Childlike Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for an anon on tumblr with the prompt, "We’re new next door neighbors whose roofs out the window are close enough to have a little patio. Please??? :)"

“Psst, Simmons!”

The girl in question dumped a moving box at the top of the stairs, panting a little as she poked her head through her new bedroom’s doorframe, “what is it?”

In response, Skye jerked her head to one side to indicate something past the jut of her shoulder. Simmons stood on tiptoe and peered around. Beyond the small window, in place of a balcony was a roof, ashen and weathered, which extended out until it met the red tiles lining the roof next door. Together, they formed a quaint little patio overlooking her backyard – a fenceless stretch of land that disappeared westward into the forest.

“An accidental patio,” Simmons nodded with satisfaction. “How nice!”

“What? No, you nerd.” Agape and quite frankly a little disappointed, Skye grabbed her friend’s shoulders and angled her towards what she needed to see.

Beyond the roof that touched her own, through the window of the adjacent house, was her new neighbor, stretched out on his bed, naked save for a flimsy pair of boxers with monkeys printed all over it. He was reading something while his headphones were on, which was why the girls’ moving commotion didn’t faze him in the least.

Simmons wiggled her eyebrows in silent appreciation, but Skye shot her a wicked grin that could only mean someone’s dignity was about to be torn to shreds.

_Oh dear God no_.

Before Simmons could react, Skye had thrown open the window and cupped a hand around her mouth, “HEY YOU! YES, YOU IN THE MONKEY BOXERS. MY FRIEND WANTS YOU TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE FORMED AND SYMMETRICAL, WITH A LOW BODY FAT PERCENTAGE.”

The unwitting neighbor was so startled that he shot upright and dove for the curtains, completely forgetting that his headphones were hooked up to his laptop. The whole contraption went flying off the bed, his legs got tangled in the cables, and the girls ended up with a clear view of his butt as he bent down to pick up his things. By the time the poor guy got to draw the curtains, ten different shades of red had flitted across his face.

Skye snickered, and Simmons smacked her upside the head.

Later that day, in the evening, Simmons watched as light poured through the cracks of those drawn curtains. A silhouette clung on to the thick fabric, which shuffled around every so often, its hands perpetually in motion, restless like the wings of a hummingbird.

She bit her lips, a little hesitant, before she climbed onto the little makeshift patio and knocked on her neighbor’s window, two beers already in hand as a peace offering for what had happened earlier.

And that was how they came to know each other, two homesick almost-adults on a distant land who happened to attend the same university, breezing through their respective Ph.D. programs because they were uncomfortably smart.

They sat on the roof to exchange anecdotes well into the night. The moon had risen high enough for its light to trickle into every corner, and as she listened to him she took in how he looked, all childlike smile and gentle ocean eyes that raged and soothed to the flow of his story. He wasn’t the bottled type of Hollywood attractiveness, but in this kind of light he was quite beautiful.

“Do you miss home?” she asked after a long stretch of silence, idly twirling an empty beer can between her fingers.

“I do,” he said ruefully. “It’s worse since Thanksgiving is approaching. I know it’s an American thing, but still, everyone’s with their family and I’m on my own, because plane tickets are the price of a grad student’s left kidney.”

“Why don’t you join Skye and me for Thanksgiving dinner?” she offered all of a sudden.

He ducked his head, scratching his neck awkwardly, “are you sure?”

She shrugged, “yes. Skye’s an orphan, and I have no family here, so it’ll just be the two of us anyway.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly.

When they both realized how late it really was, they clambered back into their rooms. He gave her a smile as he waved goodbye from his bedroom window, and there was a staccato in her heartbeat that refused to go away, even after she had drifted into the deepest of dreams.

———————————————————-

The week before finals, sometime between her second Redbull and fourth nervous breakdown of the night, Simmons slammed the laptop shut and groaned into her hands, “I can’t finish this essay. I can’t handle this rotten world unless and until I have eaten cookie dough.”

Skye glanced up from her Computer Science textbook, “you have a craving for cookie dough? But it’s 2 a.m.”

“I don’t care. I’m an adult. I should be able to eat cookie dough whenever I bloody want to, salmonellosis be damned.”

“Well tough,” Skye snorted, scrunching her nose to keep those black-rimmed hipster glasses from sliding down. “I’m not gonna drive you to Walmart.”

Simmons whipped out those puppy dog eyes, but her friend was relentless. “No –” but then she paused suddenly “– although I know someone who owes you a humongous favor.”

“Ah, true.”

The girls grimaced simultaneously at the image of a charred Thanksgiving turkey lounging in the oven, the smell of smoke thick in the air and burning in their eyes. The two of them had had to stand shivering in the late November night outside, while their flustered neighbor – incidentally the perpetrator – had frantically worked to turn the blaring smoke detector off. Honestly, how anyone could fuck up the mere task of putting a turkey in the oven was a feat in and of itself.

So that was how Simmons found herself crossing the conjoined rooftop and – finding the light still on in Fitz’s room – rapping on his window at two in the morning.

They drove to Walmart while she rattled on about the unrealistic academic expectation and general ineffectiveness of the American education system, clearly still running on the energy from her Redbull. He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to have even more sugar in your system?” he asked, sounding mildly amused and extremely concerned at the same time.

She shot him a withered look, “I need energy, enough to write that essay or maybe kill a man. Don’t make me waste it on the latter.”

“I’m sorry,” he held one defensive hand up. “Have all the cookie dough you want.”

She giggled, and he lowered his head a little to hide a fond smile. Warmth spread in her stomach, but it had nothing to do with the heat current blasting through his car’s AC system.

When she got back from her shopping, it was with her cookie dough and a pair of monkey socks. She tossed the socks into his lap unceremoniously, hoping the dark parking lot would conceal the blush coloring her cheeks. He gave her a grin wide enough to crack his face in half, eyes bright with unadulterated delight, and she could hear eight different incarnations of her in eight different universes sigh in resignation.

_This dumb, adorable,_ colossal _dork._

————————————————-

Winter faded into spring, spring blossomed into a blazing summer, and one Saturday morning on her way to the kitchen, when she passed by Fitz and Skye bickering over Assassin’s Creed, it hit her just how effortlessly he had fit into her life. Him shouldering a baseball bat to chase off an intruder while she and Skye hid, all five feet and eight inches of him suddenly looking like a giant. Him teaching Skye Calculus well into ungodly hours. Him showing up by her bedroom window with fish and chips on nights homesickness swallowed her whole. Him pulsing in her veins like blood. Him, always him.

The realization settled in like stardust. She exhaled and sipped her tea.

In the late afternoon, she peered out of her window to find him sitting on their rooftop patio. He smiled a little in acknowledgement as she joined him, but otherwise said nothing, just stared into the forest beyond their backyard, stretching to a horizon that glimmered in red and gold with the setting sun.

She fiddled with the hem of her shirt a little before turning to him, “penny for your thoughts?”

“Just enjoying the view,” he shrugged, but he was looking at her.

“Nonsense,” she retorted. “Nobody watches the sunset alone without going all existential. What are you really thinking?”

He heaved a sigh, fixing his gaze once again ahead. The light of a dying sun soaked the edge of the sky, leaking fire onto the army of trees standing still beneath, dancing wildly in his hair, placing kisses on the stubble along his jawline. The world was in flames, and he was beautiful.

“Family,” he breathed at last. “My Dad died shortly after I was born. I have no other siblings. Me and my Mum, we made do, and I wouldn’t trade what we have for the world, but I think deep down I’ve always wanted to have a family that’s whole. That’s why I’m thankful for what I have with you and Skye. You are like my family.”

“You’re not,” came her reply. She kept her eyes level to his.

“What?”

“You’re not my family,” she repeated, tremulous and honest and  _scared_ , and sometimes that was the bravest thing to be. “I can never see you as a brother, because I’m in love with you. I’m in love with you and all the things I can’t have, like rocking chairs on the front porch and morning-breath kisses with my lids half-closed, like barefoot dances around the kitchen counter and lazy Sunday mornings with ice-cream for breakfast.

“And none of this is your fault, of course. I’m the one who fell for our silent conversations through the window scribbled on notepads, who wished stargazing on the roof meant more than what you thought it meant. I’m the idiot who fell in love with a boy with hands like birds and eyes like glass. I’m smart and strong, I know that, but before your smile I can’t form words eloquent enough to say. For you alone I am weak.”

He blinked. The seconds trudged by, agonizingly slow, and she breathed out like she was ridding herself of a weight lodged in her chest.  

“’You are like my family.’ The keyword here is  _like_ , Jemma,” he finally burst out laughing. “You really need to brush up your English.”

And he lifted a hand to tilt her head back, his lips meeting hers in chaste and earnest touches that sent butterflies fluttering everywhere and made her smile into their kiss. They pulled apart, but their foreheads were still touching one another, and he kept his hand on her face to trace delicate strokes down her cheek.

Before them, the sky was streaked with orange and scarlet, the last sunbeams running home at dusk spelling out the words of a long poem. 


End file.
